


hard be the heart of a carnivore

by indigostohelit



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Casual Sex, F/M, Loyalty, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28156608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: Breathing is different, now she has the cybernetics. Not worse, exactly. There's a little less expansiveness in the swell of her lungs; the air is cooler when it runs up her throat, towards her teeth. Her body was once her body. And now? And now her body is still her body, only—
Relationships: Boba Fett/Fennec Shand, Fennec Shand/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 81





	hard be the heart of a carnivore

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cheating on big projects with small projects; listen, it's fine if Timothy Olyphant is there. (I guess this is also a summary?) Title from "My Full Moon" by Minimall. Warnings for canon-typical violence. Spoilers for Season 2.

She finds a girl at the cantina, some yellow-eyed slip of a thing in leather boots who laughs like gunfire and kneels between her legs for hours, fingers and tongue and fingers again and towards the edge and back, a war of attrition that ends when Fennec cracks at last and takes her by the back of the neck and tugs, and when she groans and stretches out on the little bed afterwards, the girl laughs all the way out the door.

And she still can't sleep. So there's that.

Breathing is different, now she has the cybernetics. Not worse, exactly. There's a little less expansiveness in the swell of her lungs; the air is cooler when it runs up her throat, towards her teeth. Her body was once her body. And now? And now her body is still her body, only—

Killing Fortuna caused more problems than it solved, according to the rest of the planet. That's fine with her. It's fine with Boba, too, as far as she can tell; not that it's ever easy to. She thinks he likes problems. If she's any indication, anyway.

Regardless: he likes problems, and he likes having tools to solve them. What she likes, to her surprise, is running operations out of the palace. She never used to—it was a job, the same as any other, and she's always enjoyed her work, and if she didn't, she wouldn't do it so well—but it wasn't as if Fortuna understood it. It wasn't as if Jabba did. To them she was an object of cruelty, or of brutality, or a threat. To them there was nothing careful or clean or clever in death.

The phrase she's looking for is _blunt instrument_.

But Boba does know her work. He knows it as well as she does. In the beginning, it's all she can think about, that once he was in her place, that he knows her place as well as he knows every inch of metal between her ribcage and her hipbone—and then, just as totally, she forgets it. It's impossible to think of it, when he's telling her who's raised a gang of raiders against him, who's interrupted the shipment he needs—who, in the back of a bar they've drunk at for twenty years where they knew themselves to be as safe as starlight, has whispered his name—

“Mos Pelgo isn't our territory,” she says.

“It's not,” says Boba. “But he's gotten stupid. Camped about thirty klicks outside of town—here.” He jabs a finger down at the map. “You can get there?”

“I think so,” she says, and then, already thinking of what she'll scrounge up when he tells her _no_ : “Lend me your ship.”

And he says: “Take it. Bring back the stolen guns. I trust you.”

So here she is, in the back room of a cantina stinking of sweat and cheap beer, watching the dawn through the window paint the bed in blues and cool greys, and her thighs are aching and her eyes are like sand, and her heart is thrumming like if she stays still a minute longer it'll burst.

She meant to leave at dawn, anyway. She tells herself that, pulling on her boots and her gloves and her coat. She meant to find the man now, while the heat was still simmering and the shadows were long enough to hide in. She meant to go to his ugly little camp he's pitched right where anyone can track him down, and she does, and she meant to find the guns he stole from Boba Fett, and she finds them, and she meant to cut a slit in his tent and push him down when he screams and shove a gun under his throat, and when he says—

“You're _his,_ aren't you?”

—she meant to kill him; and she does. And he dies.

It's when she has the guns slung over her back in a satchel and is coming back towards the _Slave_ , perched on the edge of town like a great out-of-place stone, that it goes wrong: a shadow slants over her face, and a voice says, easy and cheerful, “Didn't see you come in yesterday.”

She stops. “I didn't know there was a welcoming committee,” she says.

The man halts a few paces ahead of her and shrugs, smiling. She's heard of him, of course, and of what's been happening at Mos Pelgo, though she's never been inclined to come see for herself. She's never had a taste for the ridiculous.

“Not for everybody,” he says. “I just figured if the Dune Sea's new warlord is taking an interest in my business, maybe I oughta incline myself to take an interest in his.”

“Neighborly of you,” she says.

“Sure,” says the Marshal. “While we're being neighborly. Mind if I ask what's in the bag?”

He does look ridiculous, and she thinks he even knows it: that red scarf is like a signal flag. If she wanted to hit him, she could do it from three klicks away. “I do,” she says. “You're mistaken. It's not your business.”

“Whole town is my business,” he says. His tone is still easy, but she sees how his weight shifts on the balls of his feet.

“Yes,” she says. “We know. We waited until he left the town.”

He stares at her for a moment—then he laughs aloud.

“Not sure I like operating on a technicality,” he says. “But I do like the courtesy. Were you planning to leave right away?”

She stops, then, and looks at him hard. He's shifted his weight back, easy and relaxed. Everything about him is relaxed: shoulders down, eyes crinkled, hands open and nowhere near his blaster. Deliberately relaxed. If she wanted to draw on him, she'd have a hole in his gut before he could blink. It's like that absurd scarf: an invitation to pick out his sightlines.

Or an invitation to something.

“Why?” she says. “Do you have a better offer?”

She's sensitive, still, but that's not such a bad thing. Vanth isn't much of a tease. When she sinks down onto him his eyes jerk wide, like he's surprised. After a few minutes, he takes one of her hands where it's resting on his chest, and moves it to his throat. She lets him.

She watches him put on his boots, afterwards, how his hair falls silver over his forehead. In the dim light through the window his laces are a cat's cradle, and then they're invisible under his strong blunt hands.

“So what would it be like?” he says.

“Like?” she says.

“You know,” he says, and looks up at her. She sees the whites of his eyes, just long enough to lock a rifle's sights onto, and then he glances back down, and they're gone. “With him.”

She doesn't mean to flinch; nearly anyone else wouldn't have noticed it. Vanth does, though, and laughs. “Come on,” he says. “You're going to tell me you haven't thought about it?”

“Am I going to tell you anything?” she says, and shakes her hair out across her shoulders so she can reach back to begin the braid.

“Nah,” he says comfortably. And then: “But I bet he'd be good.”

“Oh, _you've_ thought about it,” she snaps, and wishes at once she hadn't. Vanth grins.

“What, am I gonna be shy?” he says. “Now, me, I think he'd be rough. Hold you down, maybe. Get his hands in your hair and pull. Tell you what he likes, and tell you how he likes it.” He glances up at her again; she realizes her hands are frozen, and begins to tug her braid into place again, abruptly furious with herself. “But I can't say as I'm an objective source when it comes to that kind of thing,” he says, “which you know pretty well at this point. Besides, I hardly know the man. Wearing someone's armor isn't exactly the same as an acquaintance.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?” she says. “Or are you just trying to ensure I never come back to your bed?”

“Just trying to have a little fun,” he says. “All you had to do was tell me to stop.”

She opens her mouth to say _I did_ , and then thinks about it, and looks away. Vanth huffs a laugh, soft.

“Sorry,” he says. “Didn't mean to stir up trouble.”

“That's a lie,” she tells him.

He thinks about it, then shrugs. “Maybe a little bit,” he says. “But I don't mean to stir up trouble in Mos Pelgo.” His boots are on; he wraps the scarf around his neck, tucks the end into his shirt, and stands up, and turns to the door.

“Anyway,” he says, “like I said: I don't know him. Hell, I don't even know the man's face.” The door creaks open. “Don't think I'd like to,” he adds, a moment later. “He seems like the kind of thing best left in more capable hands.”

The door closes behind him. She stares at it for a little while. Then she curls her hand into the bedsheet and whispers a curse in a language she hasn't heard since the day her mother died.

Boba Fett is on Jabba's throne. She supposes she shouldn't call it that any more. Fortuna's throne, maybe, though it isn't Fortuna's, either. The desert's throne. In any event, the throne she killed for. She lifts the satchel off her shoulders, and climbs the steps, and tosses it at his feet.

“Thank you,” he says.

She shrugs one shoulder. “They were already yours,” she says, and stands.

“Fennec,” he says, and she stops. When she turns back towards him, he jerks a thumb at the satchel of guns.

“Take one,” he says.

She blinks. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” he says. “Who did you think they were for in the first place?”

Fennec looks up at him. When she exhales, she can feel it against her lungs: that cool hard silver, which he laid into her body with his own hands.

“All right,” she says, and kneels before him to open it up.


End file.
